// check if the item was checked out, and if it does whether or not it was checked out by the user

+

// check out the item

if ($row->checkout($user->id)) {

if ($row->checkout($user->id)) {

−

echo 'The item cannot be edited at the moment since it was checked out by another user.';

+

echo 'Item was checked out by the user.';

} else {

} else {

−

echo 'The item can be edited!";

+

return JError::raiseWarning( 500, $row->getError() );

}

}

</pre>

</pre>

Line 97:

Line 97:

}

}

−

// check whether the item was checked out

+

// check if the item was checked out, and if it does; whether or not it was checked out by the user

if($row->isCheckedOut($user->id)) {

if($row->isCheckedOut($user->id)) {

// check in the item

// check in the item

Revision as of 05:24, 5 August 2011

This Namespace has been archived - Please Do Not Edit or Create Pages in this namespace. Pages contain information for a Joomla! version which is no longer supported. It exists only as a historical reference, will not be improved and its content may be incomplete.

When naming your class extension, the convention is to prefix it with 'Table', then follow with a CamelCased version of the table's name. All of the member variables of your class should match the column names in the database. The default values should be valid according to the table schema For instance, if you have columns that are NOT NULL, you must use a value other than 'null' as the default.

Finally, create a constructor for the class that accepts a reference to the current database instance. This will call the parent constructor which needs the name of the table, the name of the primary key column, and the database instance. The name of the table uses #__ instead of jos_, as the administrator can pick any table prefix desired during Joomla! installation.

If you were using this class as a part of a component called 'Recipes', you would place this code in the file /administrator/components/com_recipes/tables/recipes.php.

Using a JTable class extension

Once the table class is in place, you can use it in any Joomla! extension. To include the file, place this line in your extension's source code (use com_nameofyourcomponent in place of com_recipes):

Notice that the lowercase version of the suffix of your class name is used as the first parameter, with the prefix 'Table' as the second. Also, the getInstance() member function of JTable returns the object by reference instead of value; use =& to enforce this.

In a model class (extends JModel) you can also use:

$row =& $this->getTable('recipes');

Notice that if you have not used the standard naming convention, you can supply the class prefix as the optional second parameter.

Checkout/Checkin

Common scenario is when multiple users are editing identical item (e.g article, category, user and etc) simultaneously, which in turn, may results in arbitrary data when saved by the users (depends on who last saved the item). Joomla! solves such cases of unknown modification ownership using Checkouts and Checkins in order to provide access only to one user at a time. For example, if one user began editing an article, then it is said that the article was checked out by the user, when finished working with the article (usually by closing it using a button), the article is checked in by the user. At the time the user was editing the article, no other user could edit the same article, unless manually specified by a user with the right permissions. You can find further explanation here. The following examples demonstrate how Checkout/Checkin may be implemented.

Checkout

// retrieve item identifier from request
$itemId = JRequest::getInt('itemId');
// the user to test checkout with, could be any other user you want
$user = JFactory::getUser();
// load the item's data so we'll with what item were dealing with
if (!$row->load($itemId)) {
return JError::raiseWarning( 500, $row->getError() );
}
// check out the item
if ($row->checkout($user->id)) {
echo 'Item was checked out by the user.';
} else {
return JError::raiseWarning( 500, $row->getError() );
}

checkout() will signal the item was checked out by the user whom ID we provided as an argument to the method.

Checkin

// retrieve item identifier from request
$itemId = JRequest::getInt('itemId');
// the user to test checkout with, could be any other user you want
$user = JFactory::getUser();
// load the item's data so we'll with what item were dealing with
if (!$row->load($itemId)) {
return JError::raiseWarning( 500, $row->getError() );
}
// check if the item was checked out, and if it does; whether or not it was checked out by the user
if($row->isCheckedOut($user->id)) {
// check in the item
if ($row->checkin()) {
echo 'The item was checked in, and can now be edited by other users.';
} else {
return JError::raiseWarning( 500, $row->getError() );
}
}

We use isCheckedOut() to find out whether the item was checked out, it returns TRUE in the following cases:

Item is empty (i.e no data was loaded to the item).

The item does not support checkout, which can be as a result of database design.

The supplied user ID does not match the ID of the user who checked out the item, meaning the item is probably being edited by another user already, or the user did not properly checked in the item. This is probably the most common scenario when dealing with items in the backend.

isCheckedOut() returns FALSE in the following cases:

The item was not checked out by any user.

The item was checked out, but by the same person who is checking out again (i.e the user with the ID we passed to checkout()).

checkin() will purge any checkout state that was applied to the item.

Create/Update

In a typical situation, you will have an HTML form submitted by the user which will PHP will interpret for you as an associative array. The JRequest class in Joomla! has functions ready to assist with retrieving this data safely. Use JRequest::get('post') to retrieve all of the elements in the HTTP POST request as a sanitized array.

Once you have this array, you can pass it into the bind() method of JTable. Doing this will match the associated items of the array with member variables of the class. In the following example, the array is retrieved from JRequest::get('post') and immediately passed into bind().

If bind() fails, you want to stop the application and explain the failure before your extension attempts to send the data. The raiseWarning() function of JError allows you to stop Joomla!, while the getError() function returns the error message stored in the JTable object.

When binding succeeds and your object is ready, call the store() function. Again, if something goes wrong, stop the application and explain why.

if (!$row->store()) {
JError::raiseError(500, $row->getError() );
}

Notes:

If any member variables of your JTable object are null when store() is called, they are ignored by default. This allows you to update specific columns of your table, while leaving the others untouched. If you wish to override this behavior to ensure that all columns have a value, pass true into store().

The JTable::bind() and JRequest::get() functions do not enforce data types. If you need a column to be a specific type (for instance, integer), you need to add this logic to your code before calling store().

Read

To load a specific row of the database with JTable, pass the key into the load() member function.

$row->load( $id );

This relies on the key column you specified in the second parameter of parent::__construct() when you extended JTable.

Delete

Like read(), delete() allows you to destroy a specific row in the table based on the key specified earlier.

$row->delete( $id );

If you want to delete multiple rows at once, you will need to write the query manually.

Member Functions

Summary

When properly extended, JTable gives you all of the basic functions you need for managing and retrieving records in a database table. Member functions take care of the rest when you add member variables, the table name, and the key column.